Grid Meeting Tonight!

Making Colors Work

Although the post is delayed the recap of our last meetup...

Stephen, Darell, Josh and JJ
Started making headway in developing a color relationship to the musical notes. We were able to get black and other dark colors for lower notes and lighter colors for higher notes. It was a great site to see the colors change as we ran up the keyboard.

Since The Last Meeting
Stephen has been working really hard on color calculations to help us isolate specific colors that let us control the hue, value, and brightness at will. He's going to debut his findings at the next meeting which is tomorrow.

Next Steps
We're looking to set up specific controls based on notes and chord patterns. For example play tones that are more dark for minor chords vs bright tones for major chords. These chord patterns will react as "buttons" or "switches" to initiate the color of the shape.

The Infamous Grid Posters

March 09 Meeting
Designed By Mikey D'Angelo

February 09 Meeting

Designed By Mikey D'Angelo

Designed By Mikey D'Angelo

January 09 Meeting

Designed By Josh Sager

The First Meetup

WHITE PAPER
Zach solved the White paper dilemma. We had heard a lot about white papers, but weren't really sure what they were all about. Thanks wikipedia.

Since the early 1990s, the term "white paper" has also come to refer to documents used by businesses as a marketing or sales tool. For example, many white papers today reveal the benefits of particular technologies and products.

These types of white papers are almost always marketing communications documents designed to promote a specific company's solutions or products. As a marketing tool, it is important to note that these papers will always highlight information favourable to the company authorizing or sponsoring the paper. Such white papers are often used to generate sales leads, establish thought leadership, make a business case, or to educate customers.

There are three primary types of commercial white papers:

1. Business-benefits: Focuses on making a business case to executives
2. Technical: Helps influencers (like engineers) to understand how a concept or technology works
3. Hybrid: Combines high-level business focus and technical details into a single paper

DESIGN
Mikey made some sweet designs to promote the next meet-up. Peep them in the previous post

FLASHMIDI - Steven and JJ
They worked with flashMidi.

There a few ways to get MIDI in, but we didn't get it figured out. It possible needs a server, but we're still looking into it.

RED 5 - Kevin and Sager
Our journey started as many new to the Red 5 server. With the infamous Getting Started with the Red 5 Server Tutorial. And...

We got red 5 to give us a basic connection. WOOT! We're still not entirely sure what that means, but it's pretty cool. We connected to the midiDemo in the webapps folder, but we're still unclear on how to interpret the MIDI device. All we can really say is that it's connected.

Things got rolling with a MidiTest, but unfortunately it fell short. We referenced code from http://julapy.com/ and it felt like we were making progress, but the output list of our devices didn't show :(

We also came across Jason Grden and tried a few more things, but tonight wasn't our night.

We did find this neat nugget of information. It's a table outlining MIDI Status http://www.harmony-central.com/MIDI/Doc/table1.html

STUMBLING BLOCK - MIDI / JAVA NOT SUPPORTED ON MAC
There might be a stumbling block with reading MIDI though a java app, Kevin and Steven found this article Although we installed it, crossed our fingers nothing really happened, but were still researching proper responses.

Although I feel like we're knocking on the door we're going to circle the wagons and experiment with a few more things. Walking in blind is a little tough, but I thought we did really well.

The highlight of the night was Steven showed off GlovePie, which is a way to use a wii controller on the desktop. All you need is a wii controller, wireless sensor bar, GlovePie and you can impress your friends. Ohh and don't forget the bluetooth.

Thanks again to all who participated. I'll see you at the next Grid meetup.

Grid Promo Graphics

The Who What and Goals

Who should attend?

• Multimedia Designers
• Multimedia Programmers
• Web Developers
  
• Graphic Designers
• with web experience
• looking to learn more about the web
  
• Web Designers
• Programmers
• Web Enthusiasts or Hobbyist

What happens at a meeting?

1. Register as:
• Developer
• Designer
• Observer
2. Split into focus based on interest
3. Research, experiment, explore, and problem solve the assigned task
4. Share findings
• An oral recap at the end of the night
• On the blog
• Upload files to designated locations
5. Enthusiastic members might be offered supplemental challenges or research projects in between meetings
• All interested parties must apply for supplemental projects

What is the goal?

1. The first project on the table is experimental interaction with a midi musical keyboard and the Flash Player
2. To build a prototype utilizing experimental interaction
   
3. To give a live performance using experimental interaction

The Grid Breaks Groud in 09

What is The Grid?
The Grid is a research and development group for multimedia technologies.

When does The Grid meet?
The meetings are held monthly and are usually the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 5:30 unless otherwise posted

The Grid's Mission
The Grid's mission is to experiment and explore engaging interactions using web technologies.